Lancet: Climate Change is Passive Smoking on a Global Scale

Lancet: Climate Change is Passive Smoking on a Global Scale

In a comment piece entitled Climate Policy: Lessons from Tobacco Control, the medical journal TheLancet, Maria Nilsson, et al, point out the similarities between tobacco and climate change:

“In addition to causing huge damage to population health, both cause substantial adverse social, economic, equity, and gender effects. Both have long lead times between cause and effect, and both require long-term policies and monitoring systems. The number of countries implementing the policies effectively is far too low. Negative effects are increasing over time and will have greatest effects in low-income countries and poor populations. Both issues are influenced by strong vested interests; moreover, delaying tactics and the use of “junk science” by opponents of change have impeded effective policies.”

The authors also make the pointed observation that climate change is both deadly on a global scale and clearly a case of the richest countries in the world blowing a particularly dangerous smoke at the poorest:

“Climate change can be compared to passive smoking because those who generate the damage are not the same people as those who suffer (in the case of tobacco) or the same country (in the case of climate change); greenhouse gases are the largest externality the world has ever experienced.

And here, if we actually need it, is the article’s unassailable conclusion:

“The main lesson from tobacco for the Copenhagen conference is that delay in agreeing on international policy and poor implementation will cost countless lives. We must act now in the interests of future generations.”

Both are hazardous to the health and well being of people. So far, the greenies are on board, but as they realize that they have been had by corporate interests wanting subsidies for corn, windmills, solar, alternative fuels, and no money goes to stop CO2..

Then even the dullest of greenies will wake up. Well, maybe that is expecting too much!

First thing we do is outlaw petroleum use on private flights, phase 2 we outlaw it on public flights so that only emergency flights where life is at stake are allowable. Non essential shipping of every kind must also stop.

Next step we outlaw private non electric vehicles. Everyone must walk, bike or plug in. Next we outlaw coal and we ration electricity from other sources so that everyone has just a little.

I’m game - how about you? This would all be a minor adjustment for me.

Oh boy the second hand smoke dilemma. Nevermind that humanity has been smoking tobacco long before our generation came along. You must think that anyone who gets cancer that doesn’t smoke is a victim of second hand smoke. There is no way to prove that somebody contracted cancer through second hand smoke. Oh well, good thing nobody listens to extreme environmentalists.

Tobacco/cancer ‘skepticism’ did indeed provide a model for climate science ‘skepticism’ (corporate-sponsored idiocy would be a better term).

The first statistical evidence showing a link between smoking and cancer was published in 1929, and largely ignored. Further studies in the 1950s confirmed the connection, and in 1964 the US Surgeon General issued a Report on Smoking and Health that helped bring the issue to public consciousness.

For many years, however, ‘skeptics’ continued to deny that there was any causal connection between the two, despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary. There were even a few supposedly scientific studies that purported to cast doubt on the link (for example by the psychologist and statistician Hans Eysenck). We now know that these studies were, almost without exception, paid for and promoted by the tobacco industry.

We are now in much the same position with the science of global warming. We know it is happening, and we know that it is being caused mainly by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, as with any scientific knowledge, we cannot say that there is absolutely no chance of the vast majority of climate scientists being wrong about this – but we can be as sure about the link between manmade greenhouse gases and global warming as people were in the 1960s about the link between lung cancer and smoking, and we would be exceptionally foolish to do nothing about it.

Tellingly, of the very few scientists who question the strength of the case for anthropogenic global warming, several of the most prominent are known to have taken money from the fossil fuel industry. Even more tellingly, some of these have in the past also taken money from the tobacco industry to produce studies favourable to that industry’s interests. One of these is Dr Fred Singer – see for example this discussion of Dr Singer’s activities: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=S._Fred_Singer.

Another well-known climate ‘skeptic’, Richard Lindzen, is on record as denying that there is strong evidence linking smoking and cancer (see http://www.newsweek.com/id/78772/output/print). Lindzen also has strong links with the fossil fuel industry, as described at http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen.

The campaign to rubbish climate science is being carried on by many of the very same lobbyists who have a history of taking payment from tobacco companies to cast doubt on the links between smoking and cancer. One of the best known (and most slimily repellent) of these is Steven Milloy, proprietor of JunkScience.com and frequent contributor to Fox News, who has been pocketing payments from both tobacco companies and oil companies for many years - see http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Steven_J._Milloy#Funding.

‘Skepticism’ doesn’t come into it with people like Milloy. Better words to describe their activities would be ‘cynicism’ and ‘greed’.

We all know that smoking is bad to our health. Just think that when you smoke inside your house, your children inhaled it and we all know that it is more hazardous to your child’s health than yours because they inhaled more than yours. Just think of it. And I if your renting your house, I have some good news for you.. Fannie Mae just released their new Deed for Lease, or D4L, program. It’s a program that allows homeowners to sign a deed in lieu of foreclosure and then rent back their home from the lender. Throughout when they are “renting,” they can stay in the home and restructure the debt to make it easier to afford. According to Fannie Mae VP Jay Ryan, the D4L Program “helps eliminate some of the uncertainty of foreclosure, keeps families and tenants in their homes during a transitional period and helps to stabilize neighborhoods and communities.” Some areas, particularly areas like Detroit saw enormous amounts of foreclosures during the peak of the recession.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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